and
his disgust with himself, his capricious manias and his absurd phobias,
his obsessions and his fixed ideas all may yield to the "appeal to the
subconscious," and as a neurasthenic easily believes in the existence of
various organic diseases in his body, Christian Science can perform here
even "miracles." In the case of retardation, the psychical influence
will have to be in the first place one of training. Yet it would be
narrow to overlook that in neurasthenia, too, suggestion has to be only
a part of the psychical treatment. Training and rest, distraction and
sympathy and many other factors have to enter into the plan.
Incomparably small, on the other hand, is the aid which psychotherapy
can offer in cases of real destructions in the brain, as in the case of
tumors, hemorrhage, paresis or the degeneration by senility. More
effective may be its work in concussion of the brain and especially with
traumatic neuroses, as in the case when a railroad accident has put the
mind-brain system out of gear.

So far we presupposed that the central system itself was normal. No
sharp separation line, however, lies between all these disturbances and
the equally large group of psychophysical disabilities resulting from a
defective constitution of the brain. The normal brain shades over by
smallest differences into the abnormal one; yes, even the varieties of
temperament and character and intellectual capacity and industry and
energy represent, in the midst of our social surroundings, large
deviations from the standard. That which might still pass as normal
under certain conditions of life would be unadjusted and thus abnormal
under other conditions. In the same way, we certainly cannot point out
where the natural constitution of a brain ceases to be fit for its
organic purposes and where the structural variations are ill-prepared
for the struggle for existence. Just as we claimed that an entirely
normal brain might be brought by an emotional overstrain to a state of
exhaustion and disability, we may claim on the other side that a brain
which nature has poorly provided may yet be protected against damage and
injury. The inborn factor does not alone decide the fate. Psychophysical
prophylaxis may secure steadiness of equilibrium to a system which
inherited little resistance. Yet this large borderland region, where an
ill-adjusted brain may be saved or lost in accordance with favorable or
unfavorable circumstances, shades off again t